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This is a bit different from most conspiracy theories - and a bit different from many of the theories about London. Rather than starting with a conclusion and building evidence against it, it explores a strange discrepancy in the events of last Thursday and looks at the possible different implications. This isn’t all mine, I’ve put it together with friends, drawing on what they’ve told me – and only what they’ve told me they actually saw/experienced themselves. Much of this is backed up by accounts on other messageboards and on various blogs. I may quote or draw from these occasionally.

All the timelines relating to the bombings start with the explosion between Aldgate/Aldgate East and Liverpool St (another tiny point on which the story’s been very confused). But – I’m not sure how many people remember – there was something more than a little odd going on the tube quite some time earlier.

From about 0730, maybe even slightly before, the Northern Line was in total disarray. Par for the course on a weekday morning, you might think, but every single station south of the river was shut down. The explanation was given as a failed train at Balham – but, since when have failed trains led to a huge police presence, including vans. Two separate friends turned up at Balham tube station that morning to be turned away by large numbers of police officers. It’s fairly rare that a failed train would cause the whole line to be shut for so long anyway. One blog quotes a named person as asking the police what was going on, and whether this was a cover for something. They, apparently, couldn’t give an answer. Other (unconfirmed) reports include armed police at Kennington, as well as a vastly reduced service north of the river (extending as far as at least Highgate), with many down escalators closed. A friend was turned away from a station to the north at about 8.15 AM, although it didn’t seem officially closed or sealed off.

In short, something weird was happening on the Northern line.

Track forward to 8.30 AM, still 20 minutes before the bombings. The Piccadilly Line is suddenly suspended between Arnos Grove and Kings Cross (note, still seeking more confirmation of this.) Reason given was ‘fire’. A couple of fire engines were apparently spotted parked outside Cally Road tube around this time. This is confusing.

So, confusion on the Piccadilly line as well.

How about a bomb scare in Sheffield two days earlier? City center gridlocked for two hours? Great. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/4654289.stm. So, now we’re told the bombers are from Leeds, just up the road. I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t help feeling someone knew something would happen somewhere at some stage that week.

If we want to push the boat out a little, we can find another odd coincidence. This one’s supported by video footage as well: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/july2005/110705bombingexercises.htm

This footage shows the managing director of a Crisis Management/PR firm – Peter Power of Visor Consultants – confirming that his company was running an exercise, on behalf of a private company, which involved managing a crisis consisting of simultaneous bombings at the very stations where the bombings did in fact take place.

In his own words:
POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company, of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.

At first, I didn’t believe this, but I’ve seen the video. This is about as strange a coincidence as ever I’ve come across. Even leaving out the fact it was based on the same stations – reasonably likely targets for any attack – it still leaves me speechless. Note it was based on simultaneous bombings. It was a few days before it was announced this was what had happened.

So – what do we make of all this? It would be taking things far too far to claim that the whole tragedy took place under the auspices of government, the US or Israel, as some have been claiming. This is just scaremongering and assertion.

Instead, it seems that the authorities were probably aware of some kind of threat to the tube network on Thursday morning. Taken in combination, the odd occurrences above would suggest this was a nonspecific threat. Why, then, close/disrupt the Northern Line? I don’t buy the failed train explanation. There are two good reasons to disrupt the Northern line as a precaution.

1) The Northern Line passes under the river. The worst possible attack that could occur is for the tunnel to be breached either between London Bridge and Bank or between Waterloo and Embankment. The Bank branch’d be the worst – most of the deep-level tube system in London would flood very, very quickly, with enormous loss of life. The Jubilee line has some serious floodgates, ruling this out as a target, while the Waterloo & City, Bakerloo and Victoria have much thicker tunnels. The Northern line had floodgates at one stage, but these no longer work. This has taken some research, as you may guess.
2) Simply, it’s the second busiest tube on the network. Even disrupting it would lead to a bomber being unable to predict when/where they’d be (or the bomb’d be) by detonation time. I speculate this is what drove the fourth bomber onto the 30 Bus.

But – Why not close the whole network? There are several possibilities. Maybe the threat wasn’t taken seriously enough to shut down the whole of London on a busy morning, costing millions in terms of economic disruption. Maybe (this is very tenuous, I know) it was decided that maybe if there was going to be a bombing, let there be one. It does benefit the government politically, both in a knee-jerk way as we saw during, say, the Falklands War, and also removes many barriers to pushing through various bits of legislation. Maybe a combination of both.

I theorize that the police/whoever did receive either a threat, or more likely some form of intelligence suggesting something of that nature would take place. Maybe somebody under surveillance disappeared suspiciously from Leeds (would this explain the rapid identification of the bombers that’s been reported today?) I believe they assumed if anything would happen, which was by no means likely, it would be one terrorist, one tube. I believe that, for this reason, the Northern line was disrupted to divert a threat, if on existed, to somewhere less crucially dangerous. I also believe Peter Power was contracted to run this exercise by an ex-colleague at Scotland Yard, possibly a former member of the anti-terror squad now running an independent consultancy. This was again as a precaution, and to me would suggest that the threat wasn’t being taken all that seriously by the authorities – obviously if they were aware it would happen this coincidence would be hugely powerful. I imagine it was suspected an attack would, if it occurred at all, occur at one of these stations – they are the logical locations.

In short, I think there was moderately vague intelligence, and it was partially acted upon in a half-assed way, which now looks bad after the fact. Working under pressure, could those involved have done anything more? Only they know, and my guess is they’re not talking.
So – more cock-up than conspiracy? It certainly looks that way at the moment, although the opposite is a possibility.

And all that remains for me to do – and all that I have in my power to do – is express my sympathy to relatives and friends of the dead, the injured, and the traumatized, and those who still wait to find out if their friends or family have been caught up in this evil attack. While questions remain to be asked, as I hope I have begun to do, it’s now down to the people of London to show the world that neither crippling fear nor blind fury is the good and wise human being’s reaction to such an outrage. We should seek not only to rebuild both physically and psychologically, but to enter into the mindset of these people, and to explore what we can do, short of becoming a microscopically-controlled police state, to remove the desire, the motivation, the potential consequences and the actual likelihood of such a barbaric and despicable act occurring on our shores again.

These things do set of warning bells in my head too. For example, it's amazing how much money has gone into the American arms trade after 9/11. Our governments benefit from such things because the big money is the power that sits behing the throne. And war is a great money spinner...

one embassy, the israeli embassy i think, claimed on the day that they'd received a warning about it, which they passed onto the metropolitan police - the police said they'd had no warning. i heard this on the news on july 7th - i think the channel 4 news. i don't know how or whether at all that argument was resolved.

They obviously knew something and the mystery of why a bomber was on the bus makes it hold water - either he chickened out or was on the Northern Line and was evacuated and found himself on a bus and tried to diffuse it (hence the man seen 'rummaging though his bag)

The truth will sadly never fuilly come out - let's spend this time thinking of those fully affected by the atrocity

It would seem from your research that some intelligence had filtered through to the authorities - possibly most likely due to the movements of an individual under investigation.

Let's take one fact though - this was a criminal act and therefore the issue of motive is paramount

What motive would be behind a group of four men blowing themselves up?
There has been no declaration of jihad (at least not publicly) by this group and so it is dificult to pinpoint a motive. Some might believe that radicalism is motive enough but I would caution against that because when it comes down to the individuals involved, personal gain is usually the prime mover.

So who might have a motive?

Perhaps the group were organised by a 3rd party or other individuals - certainly the plan didn't take too much imagination but they had to have got their high explosives from somewhere. Where? They couldn't have made the bombs themselves SOMEONE ELSE HAS TO BE INVOLVED.

Simple forensic tests - presuming this was possible - at the bombsite should be able to locate the explosives manufacturer. In any case the police have said that they have found explosives in the properties they raided yesterday so we should find out where the explosives have come from. I'm guessing that this fact, if and when made public, will be incidental to the media but is crucial to the investigation.

So what kind of 3rd party might have a motive?

Let's look at the immediate reaction.

Talk of Al-Qaeda

Western leaders jumping to the defense of their 'Way of life.' Freedom, liberty, democracy - you know the drill.

A call by community leaders to 'not let this divide us'
(this is an odd thing to say so early on with no evidence of division - on the contrary there is a wide recognition of solidarity in the face of barbaric slaughter, particularly in the London community)

Basically, if you put it in context of the previous week or so when Africa and making poverty history and to a lesser extent climate change were the global media watchwords, the main and immediate change these bombs brought about was to return The War On Terror to the top of the agenda.

Who benefits? Who might have a motive for these far-reaching consequences.

In short-term financial benefit probably the media has most to gain - sales of newspapers and viewing figures for TVnews networks inevitably increase.

In power terms there are many who gain - primarily the police but more subtly our world leaders - or indeed anyone in the post-trauma aftermath who comes on TV and shows resolve, compassion and determination. It has a psychological effect that we can't really consciously override when our brians are trying to rationalise a large amount of information.

Who gains financially over the long term?
Arguably weapons manufacturers. There are more armed police and the socio-political 'instability' in the aftermath leads to a build up in 'defense'. Rumsfeld is in Italy today championing the war on terror. The Milan police, on the day after the London bombs, rounded up and deported 142 illegal immigrants. The americans shot and killed an Italian intelligence agent in Iraqi - something smells fishy in Rome.

So a direct motive could be established for the suppliers of the explosives if they are in the market for some of the above

Or one or more political leaders might gain in consolidating their power

It's dificult to see who might be behind these attacks unless you invent a conspiracy in which some unknown agency (the military-industrial complex? the illuminati? the christian-conservatives? MOSSAD? Al-Qaeda?) has a controlling force over police, military, intelligence, media and defence manufacture.
That might be a Government then?

The American administration made a huge gain in global control and influence in the wake of 9/11. One could argue to infinity the many ways in which our response to 9/11 has been completely controlled by the media. 3 and a half years later we actually have NO IDEA what really happened and who was responsible for 9/11.

I think the same, unfortunately, will be true of 7/7.

There will not be a public enquiry and unless pragmatic journalists can investigate the reasons why this happened and for what purpose and by whom, then this curious brand of 'terrorism' will persist

We had a bomb scare on Saturday and there is one today at Piccadilly. It makes me wonder about the safety of working in city centres. I hope people are staying vigilant but it doesn't look like it to me. Apparently one of the cinemas here was doing back checks at the weekend. Funny there are none on public transport.

It is a tricky one - due to the nature of the attack (suicide bomber), we have no memory to judge what a proportionate reaction should be. Besides which, not everyone has the same reaction - some are worried to the point of cancelliong trips to the capital (in much the same way that many Americans cancelled flights after the Twin Towers atrocity), while the vast majority are doing the only rational thing - getting on with their lives. If there is any over-reaction, I would argue it is media led.

the media is certainly over reacting and perhaps the police and security forces too though they will always err on the side of caution even if it means blowing up someone's sandwich box or whatever

but this event is being reported and generally seen as cumulative under the nebulous tag of 'islamic radicalism' - if it is part of an unspecified all-out assault on our liberty and security perhaps not. It's not like we're invading Iraq or Afghanistan as a reaction.

i'm currently at my family's home in isolated rural northumberland and on the morning of the attacks, when i told my younger brother, he said "well, i'm still going to get on the bus to morpeth. if i stay at home out of fear, then bin laden will have won"

i was going to write a massive post but thought against it. I mean in the sense that it is a relative small loss of life (attacks happen daily in poorer countries with more loss of life), the fact that it is a terrorist attacks against 'the west/britain' i think is leading to over-reaction.
i dont disagree with the heightened security and i cant believe that any goverment officials had some sort of planning in the attack. I can believe that security/police might have known and not told the public.

I can see where you're coming from here but all loss of life is tragic. It happened in this country and jolted people out of complacency and comfort. The shock causes overreaction but media sensationalism and rolling news is the main cause of hysteria/fear and paranoia. It doesn't stop this being a very real tragedy and a very big message to everyone here to be more vigilant. I don't believe in any conspiracy right now, it's too soon for speculation.

For a city like Manchester (and the other major cities) to effectively address security concerns and make us significantly safer they'd basically kill the city, don't you think? Cities thrive on their pace .... i know what i mean, even if i'm certain nobody else will.

I know what you mean and I think it's true of many cities.
Security means the rule of law and many cultures thrive on the black market of their communities so rule of law just roboticises or zombifies the populace

And indeed, no security is flawless and increased security runs the risk of magnifying events - if a structure depends on conforming to a rigid pattern just a single rogue element can cause massive collapse

yeah, but even on a simpler level than that .... should they search everyone for bombs before they board buses? It used to take me over an hour to do the journey into manchester already without excessive security.

A city like Manchester requires the fluidity of being able to move people about as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's even more critical in london.

i think if you were getting a bomb every 3 months then maybe. But Manchester has never been bombed by Islamic extremists and, of all the people who have been arrested in Manc under the terrorist act, i think only one has ever been charged so y'know.

I think we have to live with the fact that there is a small risk and that we can never have perfect security and that the pursuit of perfect security could be more damaging.

One interesting point which hasn't been mentioned (or I just haven't read) is about the whole Al Qaeda thing. Most sensible people agree that aside from there being no real advantage for a wordwide "network" of Al Qaeda, it's also quite impossible that it actually exists. So when something like this happens and everyone goes "Bin Laden ordered it!" I always find it a bit ridiculous. There was a Muslim leader/scholar/I can't remember exactly who he was on Newsnight the other day who made a good point - that Al Qaeda, if it exists, does so more as a "movement" than an actual organisation. There is no reason why the London bombings would have to have been ordered from the top. All you actually need if four crazy guys who can go on the internet and find out how to make a bomb. The government seem to instantly assume "oh they're a cell. Bin Laden must have trained them" Because that way it justifies TWAT (the war on terror) and they can carry on their neverending terrorist-bashing and not have to wake up to the fact that what they have to do is address some of the real issues and causes for this kind of fundamentalism.

yeah, it bothered me when people started obsessing about the strategy of the terrorist and how it related to bin laden's aims .... the fact is that al-qaeda is so decentralised and loosely knit together, and not at all in organisational terms, that the idea that Bin Laden calibrates an overarching strategy is crazy.

I totally disagree with your last sentence though. The cause of fundamentalist terrorism is fundamentalism. But I'm not sure I want to get dragged down this road again ....

yeah. '7/7' makes me cringe as well..........9/11 makes me cringe too. I'm sure there are many, many dates we could think of when American and British troops have murdered large groups of people, but we don't remember those dates............

'Speculation' is a word that seems to apply to a lot of theories being bandied around here. If there is a conspiracy over this attack then would the original poster like to explain quite how this attack can be compared ot the Madrid bombing in terms of how the Spanish government at the time managed to 'profit'? The answer is that they didn't and the Spanish voters showed them the door. Isn't there the slightest chance that Blair would remember this and not risk public opinion turning against him as the Spanish electorate did against Aznar?